MOC- Jupiter Locomotive

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This is my first train MOC, and it felt like a big, complicated project. It’s based on inspired very loosely by the Jupiter train from the Lone Ranger film. I gave myself a simple brief when designing it- it must be fully compatible with the Constitution train, and have some interesting function. I took most of the time connecting together a complex trigger system for a light brick in the firebox, which is activated by a small lever in the cab. I didn’t actually look at any photos when building the thing, and I’ve now realised the actual thing was mostly silver, like most things in the Lone Ranger (Horse, gun, bullets, mine etc), but here we go with a red, dark red and gold-themed train. I built a coal carriage based closely on the Constitution’s and a few other carriages, but I’ll share those later. Anyway, I’ll let these amateurishly taken photos tell the tale best. Most of these pictures link to huge version, but this one goes to my Flickr.

Front view, showing those headlights I'm quite proud of.

A neat side view

The train's back half, with the coals.

Our cheerful driver works the controls here

Here is the driver messing about with some vent on the side, which is only here because I found it fitted there.

Finally, the "play function" I built into the model. Here is the cab's interior...

... And when that lever is pulled upwards by an enormous finger-thing of The Man Upstairs...

It lights up! You have no idea how long that took. I had to rip out and reconstruct the interior many times before that would work.

Anyway, that's it until I finish off and upload all the carriages I made to go with this thing. Building it was a new experience and it was fun working with all these new-to-me parts.